I discovered the story behind this remote ancestor quite inadvertently. Some years ago I had taken the research of someone else to be correct and had copied it onto my tree. This is always unwise but on remote branches it was something I sometimes did in the early years - I have since learnt that everything needs to be researched and verified before it is added. However, in this case, I added Harold to my tree and incorrectly gave his occupation as "philatelist". Quite recently I was approached by one of his brother's descendants and, as a result, his interesting life can be revealed.

Back row : Harold in the blazer and George in the white cap

One of my 4 x great grandfathers on my adopted tree was George Wareham (1798 - 1851). He had 11 children and I am a descendant of his son William. Harold Cecil Wareham, on the other hand, was the great grandson of another son, George, so it is a completely different branch of the Wareham line and very remote from mine.

Harold was born in the summer of 1910. On the 1911 census he was 10 months old living with his parents at 6 Hurst Road, Winchmore Hill in North London. His brother, Herbert George Wareham, always known as George, was born the following year.

Harold was a horticulturalist and dedicated gardener all his life.

He went into partnership with John Crutchfield and they bred dahlias which were included in a number of Royal Horticultural Society trials at RHS Wisley. Their company was called John Crutchfield Limited and they had a nursery at Snow Hill, Copthorne, Crawley in Sussex (now called Haskins Garden Centre).

One of the dahlias was named after his daughter, "Jane Wareham" and is listed in The World Directory of Dahlias 2010:

One of the reasons this story attracted me was that we live quite close to Ayletts Garden Centre which is renowned for its Dahlias. They won 36 consecutive Gold Medals between 1961 and 1999 at RHS shows and at the RHS Great Autumn Show of 1977 the Nursery was awarded the Williams Memorial Medal which is presented for the best exhibit of plants and / or flowers of a single genus staged at one of the Society shows during the course of a year. The exhibit included at least one contributed by John Crutchfield (see right).

Harold met his second wife Betty through the nursery where she also worked and was also an avid gardener. He eventually sold his part of the nursery and worked as a gardener for various large houses in Sussex, before moving to Somerset with Betty where they planned to set up a nursery, but sadly he died in 1987 and they never realised their dream.

Original posted 29th April 2015

SUPPLEMENTARY

The major drawback when writing about ancestors is that you can easily miss the BIG story, which is what happened here. I happened to ask George's granddaughter if Harold had been in an exempt occupation due to his gardening business or whether he had taken part in the War. She replied that his interest in horticulture probably started after the War and that in fact he had been one of the first of our troops to arrive in Belsen Concentration Camp in April 1945. He wrote to his brother George about his experiences and the letter is in the Imperial War Museum.

The descriptions of what they found are horrific in the extreme (see the BBC article - 1945: British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen). It occurred to me, and to his granddaughter, that perhaps his love of gardening was an escape for Harold after witnessing the horrors there. It is unimaginable what they must have seen and inevitably it must have influenced the way in which he would spend the rest of his life.